Hannah Montana: Opportunity
by Thor2000
Summary: Late prequel to Hannah Montana: Secret Identity introducing Jesse Samms and his turbulent first encounter with Miley Cyrus and franchising off her identity as Hannah Montana.
1. Chapter 1

Bayside High School in Malibu, California was pretty much the standard high school in Southern California. It was as old as some of the others to have turned out stars like Tom Hanks or Reese Witherspoon, but it had its few claims to fame. A few students had made their attempts to reach for the stars, like young beauty Becca Weller, who had eight commercials under her resume and two supporting parts as an older sister to Dakota Fanning in one movie and a young sister to Haley Joel Osment in another. Another would be up-and-coming was Amber Addison, one half of the school fashion zombies known as Amber and Ashley who were so much in love with themselves that anyone who wasn't them wasn't worth their effort. Amber had auditioned for American Idol and had been rejected by the British judge on the end. Her warped sense of reasoning was that Paula Abdul was jealous of her, any excuse possible than to face the truth that her personality was lousy. Yet, when Christy Vaughn made it through to Hollywood and was let go during the final cuts, Amber didn't bat an eye. To her, how could Christy get through and not her?

Bayside did have one already prominent star in its halls even if it didn't know it. Hidden beneath her real identity, one auburn haired beauty was secretly entertainer Hannah Montana to the rest of the world. Loved by fans, a peer to pop stars and a young fashion mogul by the age of fifteen, this vivacious young girl hid her secret dual identity much tighter than comic book superheroes. It gave her a chance for a regular life in the real world. Only her family and closest friends knew her secret, an earth-shattering secret that she was not sure she'd ever reveal. Sure she could have anything in the world of she let loose with her identity, but the consequences of revealing it would be a price to her privacy. If but one person knew the secret of…

"Miley!!" Oliver Oaken dashed into the school and swung around a corner for his friends. Miley Stewart clutched her books tightly and closed her locker. Running past classmates but slowing in the presence of teachers, the mop-topped brunette class clown screeched to a stop before Miley and Lily Truscott. Lily was the blonde tomboy with the skateboard hanging from her backpack of notebooks. Ramming into the lockers before them, Oliver stopped turned to face them and caught his breath in an instant.

"Miley…" Oliver spoke in hushed tones. "I need your help. I ordered an autographed picture of Hannah Montana for my cousin's birthday next month off Ebay and it arrived yesterday not signed. Could you sign it?"

"How can you ask her that here?" Lily lowered her voice and looked round to see if anyone was listening.

"Oliver," Miley pulled him close to force him to face how stupid he was at times. "Why would you order an autographed Hannah photo when I can give you one for free?"

"Because you were on a European tour last month when I ordered it!" Oliver forced her to face the truth. "Something else you didn't invite me to!!!"

"Man, we had so much fun!!!" Lily had tagged along as Miley's guest on that tour.

"Oh…" Miley snatched the photo of herself in her blonde Hanna wig and turned to her locker. With Lily blocking her view, she pushed the photo to Lily's back and signed it in her usual signature. Feeling the pen writing into her back, Lily caught sight of a cute boy she wanted to meet. He had short dark hair like Ricky Ullman and dreamy brown eyes like George Clooney replete with striking eyebrows and an athletic build. Garbed in a dark blue shirt, baseball jacket and faded blue jeans with an old weathered fedora on his head, her future conquest was carrying a large military backpack for his books to class. Judging by his unfamiliarity with the school, he had to be new as he searched for his new high school locker. Miley finished her Hanna autograph and secreted it back to Oliver to hide away, but her boy radar went up and she locked on to the young stud for herself. She realized Lily had seen him too.

"I saw him first!!!" They screamed together and jumped forward to stake their claims. Leaving Oliver behind, the two girls once again proved that where boys were concerned, there was nothing sacred. Lily tried to bar Miley from getting past her, but the quicker Tennessee native ducked her arm and slammed against the lockers next to the new boy.

"Hi……." Miley grinned dreamily to the guy as Lily groused and grumbled for being too slow.

"Hi." The new boy did not understand this response from girls.

"I'm Miley…"

"And I'm her best friend, Lily!!" Lily interrupted her with a dreamy beaming grin on her face. Miley grumbled a bit herself and looked to Oliver. He loved their competing for this guy's attention. It was always funny to see them trying to screw each other up. "You must be new here!" Lily quickly observed.

"Is it that obvious?"

"Yeah…" Oliver interjected. "They already fought over the all other cute boys here. They need fresh meat." Lily and Miley both grabbed and twisted his chest to keep him from embarrassing them.

"I'm Jesse… Jesse Samms. I just moved here from Nashville." The new boy introduced himself as he unloaded his pack.

"You're from Nashville!!!" Miley saw a place to grab him up: they had something in common. "So am I!! I'm from Ridgetop in the North, you?" Lily was already groaning realizing he had nothing in common with her unless he liked skateboarding.

"Belle Meade…" Jesse was already taking a shine to Miley.

"What a small world…" Oliver grinned sarcastically and looked to Miley hysterically happy then panned over to Lily rolling her eyes upset.

"My mom works for Capitol Records…." Jesse continued.

"Really, that's my…." She caught herself about to reveal her secret identity. "My… my favorite singer's recording label, Hannah Montana?"

"I love Hannah Montana!!!" Jesse confessed.

"Crap!!!" Lily was growing ticked off and invisible by the minute with the stuff Miley and Jesse had in common. Oliver was laughing at her so she hit him in the shoulder.

"These lockers aren't very big out here, are they?" Jesse was trying to get more things in his locker than his schoolbooks.

"You can keep some stuff in mine." Lily started flirting to Jesse with a big happy grin on her face despite the fact it was against school rules for two students to share lockers.

"How much room do you need, dude?" Oliver stood watching this encounter before him.

"I need room for my merchandise." Jesse placed his fedora on his locker's top shelf and squeezed his jacket in on a hook in the back then leaned forward clandestinely. "You know how a lot of your friends wait till the last second to do book reports and term papers?"

"Yeah…" Lily was carefully listening in disbelief.

"Well, that's where I come in…" Jesse pulled out a stack of reports, term papers and boxes of pencils and supplies from his pack. "I got science papers, book reports, history lessons, binders, math tests, concert tickets, celebrity photos – doctored and undoctored, celebrity merchandise… if I don't have it, I can get it. Get the word out to your friends." He paused looking out for teachers. "I was very successful back home." He beamed like the junior entrepreneur he was, and reached into his jacket pocket. "I got Jessica Simpson DVDs, Kelly Clarkson hair clippings, Hillary Duff photos…. Here, have some official complimentary Hannah Montana guitar picks…"

Forgetting her attraction to this boy, Miley dropped her jaw and shock and stopped smiling. Oliver seemed to love his franchise and Lily started wondering how Jesse could pull this all off.

"Where do you get this stuff?" Lily took the guitar pick and noticed it was embossed in the name of Hannah Montana. She started wondering if Jesse had been expelled from his last school.

"My mom gets a lot of free promotion stuff from her company which she gives me to share with my friends," Jesse admitted. "But I realized a long time ago I could make a lot of money selling the stuff and it sort of spiraled out from there. Where can I break a hundred around here?"

"Man, dude…" Oliver couldn't stop grinning. "Your old friends must have hated to see you go. Do you have a book report on Great Expectations?" He hadn't read the book.

"I just got to print it." Jesse waved his master CD.

"How can you get away with this?" Miley was deeply offended by his profiteering. "You're… you're stealing from all those people. Do you know how many people are supposed to get residuals from all that merchandise?" As Hannah Montana, she had been upset before that creeps like Jesse sold a lot of bootleg merchandise with the name of her alter ego on it.

"Miley, Miley, Miley…." Jesse took her aside and placed his arm across her shoulders as a friend. "Look at it like this… Hannah Montana lives somewhere in a big mansion sipping fruit drinks by the pool and being served by twelve beefy pool boys. She ain't going to miss a few paltry cents from a few silly guitar pics."

"Oh, brother, buddy, have you got it wrong…." Oliver started chuckling at Jesse's perception of Miley's life when she was not Hannah. All she received from her fortune was a paltry $100 allowance and the rest went to a bank account to be invested for her until she came of age. Her father and manager, Robby Ray Stewart, handled her more extreme requests, but it was from a twenty-year old beach house and not a large mansion with a pool. Miley shot Oliver a look realizing how close he was to busting her secret identity.

"You are like the coolest guy on the planet!" Lily was shining up to him again, but Jesse just humbly mugged and turned away to his locker as he perused his new school schedule and hoped to get around Bayside as easy as Knox Miller High School back home in Nashville. He still had orders to fill to his clients back home.

"Lily…" Miley turned and whispered to her best friend. "What he is doing is wrong. He is going to get us in a lot of trouble!" She noticed Oliver giving Jesse a ten-dollar bill. He was buying something?

"Oliver?!"

"It's actual hair from Ashley Simpson from his mom's car…" He held up a clear plastic container with strands of blonde hair in it.

"Oh, wait a second…" Jesse was correcting himself as he fumbled with other containers. "That's from Britney Spears… here's the Ashley…."

"You got anything from Jesse McCartney…" Lily asked as Miley shot her a look.


	2. Chapter 2

2

By the end of the day, Jesse Samms was everyone's best friend. He had made $750 from his classmates, he was working in the library near the copiers to get the transparencies to future tests, he was part of the office staff for access to blank passes and permission slips and was even getting special food orders from the cafeteria staff. Teachers loved him cause he seemed the model student, and the principal held him as an example because he seemed so polite. Only one person was not as crazy about him as everyone else. Wondering why she had ever mooned over him, she grumbled and ground her teeth through the day as more and more students crowded round her locker placing orders and buying things from Jesse. He even sold his fedora because Christina Aguilera allegedly wore it in a concert.

"I swear, dude…" Jackson was talking to Cooper his best friend over the phone. "The new kid sells book reports at twenty bucks a piece! I made a B-plus on a paper I didn't even write!!!!!" He heard the doors of his beach house home opening up and his sister Miley marching in disgusted with Lily and Oliver, her usual retinue of friends.

"Princess Charming just got home." Jackson made one of his condescending nicknames for his annoying younger sister. Upon hearing it, Miley rolled her eyes to him and snarled with all the ferocity of a teddy bear with rabies.

"Anyway, Coop…" Jackson watched Hannah sharing bottles of water with her friends and continued talking over the phone. "This guy has a catalog of all he sells. It's great!! You know how we worried about Shakespeare next semester? He sells cliff notes and book reports. Thanks to Jesse Samms, we could graduate after all… with honors!!!"

Miley screeched at the sound of that name.

"Jackson…" Oliver approached Miley's brother. "Jesse also sells bootleg music memorabilia; he has Hanna Montana stuff, and it's driving Miley nuts!"

"Don't care…." Jackson revealed his complacency to his sister's frustration. "Look, " He revealed Jesse's former fedora. "Christina Aguilera once wore it; I got it for $200!!!"

Without saying a single word, Miley walked over with her venomous little grin and snatched the hat. With a twist of her wrist, she flung it out the open door to the patio. The hat caught a slight breeze and flew into the air. His face a mixture of shock and loss, Jackson dropped his phone and dove after it. Right behind him, Lily was striving to own the hat as well and tried to beat him to him. Watching her brother chasing after it was funny, but watching Lily trying to get it was unexpected.

"Hey, look what I found..." Miley's father, Robby Ray Stewart, returned home from jogging wearing the fedora. It was back!!! "I found this out front as I was jogging. It has Christina Aguilera's autograph in it!!" He tipped it forward on his head trying to look cool for his daughter and Oliver.

"Dad…" Miley turned her head up to her father. "There's a boy at school selling bootleg Hannah merchandise. His name is Jesse, and he…"

"Connie Samms's kid?" Robby guessed as Miley and Oliver were taken aback by his precognitive vision. They didn't know the name of Jesse's mother, but Robby sure seemed to know him. They turned and looked at Miley's dad as if he had said a dirty word.

"Is that boy at it again?" He was shaking his head slowly and disappointedly. "Remember my business trip last month. Connie invited me to her home for a spaghetti dinner and that kid took my napkin and sold it on EBay for $500!!"

Oliver spied a look in the wastebasket and noticed a half-eaten apple he could say was Hannah Montana's.

"Don't even think it, son." Robby took the wastebasket and stuck it under the sink. He turned back to his daughter with a deep breath. "I knew Connie was moving out here to take a new position in the company, but I never would have guessed Jesse would show up at your school. Darling, the world's full of opportunity-seeking entrepreneurs and many of them are much more decent about it. You can't stop everyone who sells something with Hannah on it. Jesse is just one of the more inventive and conniving. I'm just grateful his mother made him stop selling book reports."

"He… he sells book reports?" Oliver tried to react shocked and surprised. "The nerve of him…" He grabbed his schoolbooks and turned heading out the back door of the kitchen. Miley rolled her eyes toward him and rolled her blue eyes back to her father.

"Dad," Miley looked to her bottle of water and then to her father standing over her wearing the fedora. "I know I can't stop him from selling stuff, but you ought to hear the dumb things he says about Hannah living in a big mansion with servants and stuff."

"Where do think Hannah's fans picture her living?" Robby moved through the kitchen and took a bottle of water for himself from the cooler in the refrigerator. "In an outhouse?"

"I guess you got a point…" Miley started seeing it his way. Behind her, she heard Jackson and Lily returning from searching the grounds and yard for the autographed fedora. They both looked bummed for losing it, but upon seeing on Robby's head, they screamed and pounced on him.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa…." Robby held them off. "Did someone buy this off Jesse?"

"I did…" Jackson confessed eager to get it back. "For $250!"

"I thought you spent $200 on it?" Lily tried to correct him.

"Shut up…" Jackson tried to hush her.

"I guess it's mine now…" Robby tilted it on his head. He mused teasingly at his son, and turned dancing up the stairs to his room.

"Give that hat back, old man!!!" Jackson charged after him to the second floor. Behind him, Lily groused unconsciously and jealously and turned to Miley for her company. Sitting on one of the kitchen chairs, she listened to Miley sighing.

"What did your dad say?"

"He pretty much said I couldn't do anything about Jesse selling Hannah merchandise…." Hannah sipped her water and had a revelation. "Wait a second, he said I couldn't do anything about Jesse selling Hannah merchandise, but I think I know who can…." She started grinning ear to ear with a mischievous gleam to her eye.


	3. Chapter 3

3

A few blocks over and three streets away from the beach was a Mediterranean stucco house with a shackled roof, gated pool and hedged lawn. Rumor was the house once belonged to Desi Arnaz Jr. and later on a former soap star named Faith Fairlane, but her studio had fired her over public grievances and it was now sold to Constance Samms, a beautiful and rapturous brunette British lass who had worked for Camelot Records in London and now Capitol Records in the United States. She had met and worked with everyone from Paul McCartney and The Monkees to Jem and the Holograms and Boys n' Motion. When she wasn't hobnobbing with the musical elite, she was shining over and raising a fifteen-year-old boy named Jesse born from a brief romance with a high school love. Jesse had never met his father, nor had Connie wanted him to. Lance Brandon had been a down-on-his luck singer whose career nose-dived after a prison sentence for smuggling illegal drugs into Canada. Connie had taught her son all the life lessons she wanted him to know, and showed him the proper graces by teaching him all the slow dances, but where she succeeded in making him a sensitive male, she had failed by giving him too much freedom.

"Sweetheart…." She was dressed in a red jacket and skirt combo with a black blouse and hosiery. Her head turned to the direction of her son as she adjusted an earring. "I've got a long meeting today and won't be home for a while. There's plenty of food and a lot to still unpack. I'll call you when I can."

"Yeah, mom…" Jesse was at his laptop computer typing again. He felt his mother hovering over him reeking of her fine French perfume.

"Honey…" Connie Samms looked to her son. "You're not selling things in school again, are you?" She paused and stroked the top of his head lovingly. "I mean… I'd hate to think that with the trouble you got into back home that you'd learn your lesson. The superintendent wanted to try you as an adult!"

"I'm just typing up a report for school…" Her son claimed. His mother kissed his head.

"I'm off the meet a new recording talent." Connie shone toward her single child. Jesse distracted acknowledged her by waving his hand into her general direction and listened for the front door opening and closing. Upon hearing her Saab start up, he wandered directly for the window to acknowledge her departure, watched her car back out and away and returned to his small computer to hook into his mother's printer. From a folder marked "School Business," he produced receipts he wanted to record, money he wanted to acknowledge and a new list of customers he wanted to put on his on-line newsletter. In his mind, he wasn't doing anything wrong, his franchise was to help slow and struggling kids make the grades they could not because of teachers who couldn't teach and assignments that otherwise took too much of a teenager's valuable time. He had a service to fulfill that helped his peers to reach the grades they couldn't get and help pass students that the school system held back because of time restrictions. Every teacher at school believed homework should take an hour to do, but they forgot these kids had seven teachers!

On the side, Jesse had to replenish his inventory. He had sold three photos of Jessica Simpson with the generic "favorite fan" autograph, five of Hillary Duff, seven of Jesse McCartney and eight of Kelly Clarkson. He had to wash his mother's car for the hairs of the Jonas Brothers when she picked them up at the airport to avoid their fans and he still had to finagle Hannah tickets to loot her dressing room while she was on stage. Having a mother in the recording business was the greatest opportunity in the world!

An hour after his mother had departed, Jesse was printing more Vanessa Anne Hudgins photos when someone knocking at the door of his home perturbed him. If only he could get protection from solicitors the same way he had from telemarketers and spammers... A deep sigh and a long groaning noise from his computer through the living room to the front door, he grumbled under breath cursing anyone who bothered him, but then he opened the front door of his house and recognized the pop princess at his front door.

"Hi…. I'm Hannah Montana!" The pop star stood on his front porch grinning ear-to-ear. Surprised by her appearance, Jesse recognized her with his eyes widening in shock and slammed the door in her face and started to bolt for the back door of the kitchen to escape then stopped. What was he doing?! Could it have really been her?! It had to be a joke, or an illusion. He'd been staring at her face from his merchandise all day long! Daring to venture back and get another look, he treaded back slowly and unsure to figure out just what he had seen. Creeping back to the front door, he wondered just who he had slammed it on, and slowly opened it once more. He cracked open the door.

"Hi…. I'm Hannah Montana!" The pop star once again stood on his front porch grinning ear-to-ear and waving hello. "Are you Jesse Samms?"

"Uhhhh…" Jesse looked for Ashton Kutcher to pop out to scare him with another episode of Punk'd. "Yeah…" He wondered what was going on.

"Well…." Hannah marched into his house as if she owned the place. She was garbed in her usual urban city wardrobe, a style that mixed Western denim and boots with modern fashion. "I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend that you're a big fan!" She beamed vivaciously exuberant.

"Oh my god…." Jesse had a big grin on his face that would have to be removed surgically if he was ever going to be normal again. "Hannah Montana is in my house!!!" He chuckled under breath.

"Well," Hannah looked round the living room and noticed a side niche overlooking the windows where Jesse was printing his photos. "What have we here? Jessica? Ashley? Zach Efron…" She stole a copy of the picture and tucked it into her jacket. "Vanessa, Christina…. Oh, and me too!"

"I can't believe you're in my house!!" Jesse was star-struck and beaming brighter than an expectant father. "Could you wait here while I get my camera? Oh, would you like to sign a few things for me?!!!" He was started to grovel at her feet.

"Oh, I don't know…." Hannah looked over his inventory. "Should you leave me alone with all this stuff?" She became as cloyingly mischievous as a bratty child looking for trouble. "I mean, somehow… all you photos could burst into flames…."

"What?'" Jesse was no longer smiling.

"Ooooo, look,…. Receipts…." Hannah poked through his school folder. "And a shredder!!! I love shredding paper!!!"

"No!!!!!!!!!!" Jesse watched as days of his sales were starting to get shoved in through the tiny slicing teeth of his mother's copier. Hannah was shredding as fast as she could, and he was trying to get her away from his business ventures. Hannah felt him trying to push her aside, but she pushed him back as well as if she were fighting with her brother. It was suddenly very obvious what she was trying to do. She was going to ruin him!!

"What's on the computer?" Hannah turned to the laptop as Jesse started pulling strips of his files from the wastebasket. "Wow, look at all the reports and assignments here! Oh, look, an erase key!!!"

"No!!!!" Jesse grabbed a croquet bat from a box of his mother's belongings and stood ready to lay out the pop star. He held it on her head and issued a demand first. "Step away from the computer!!!!"

"Oops, too late!!!" She beamed her evil grin at him.

"No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Jesse realized he couldn't hit her and jumped on his laptop to resurrect everything from the back-up files. As he started rebooting files from his hard-drive, Hannah grabbed up all his photos and dropped them into the wastebasket. She reached into her pocket and started striking up a match. She could never get a flame on the first strike.

"Stop!!!" Jesse pleaded at her knees. "Do you know how much photo paper costs?!!!"

"Don't care…." She tried to relight another match.

"Stop!!!!" Jesse was hysterical. His breath was racing and his nerves were over-wrought. "Why? Why are you doing this to me?"

"Look, buster…." Hannah stood over him at such an angle she appeared fifty-feet tall over him. "I told Kelly, Ashley, Jessica and everyone else what you were doing and we decided to put you out of business! If you don't stop selling all these bootlegs and cheat sheets, I'll be back… and I'll be bringing them with me! Got it?!"

Jesse was whimpering like a hurt puppy.

"Yes, ma'am…." He was blubbering over all the damage.

"Then my job is done…" Hannah shined contently and started strolling away, but then something caught her eye that she liked.

"Did Zac Efron really sign that basketball?" She pointed to a basketball in a box.

"Yes, ma'am…."

"It's mine now…."

"But already sold it to Amber Addison!!!!" Jesse confessed.

"Oh, Kelly…." Hannah feigned making a call on her cell phone.

"Take it!!!" Jesse screamed at her. With a gleeful shriek of success, Hannah turned on her heel and started striding out of his house. Behind her, Jesse fell outstretched to the floor and realized he was ruined. She had erased files, shredded his orders and ruined his franchise. After all that hard work, he had nothing.

"For someone that cute, she sure is vicious!!!" Jesse started getting up off the carpet then saw Hannah coming back in after him. Whimpering and crawling behind the sofa, he ran straight into her and looked once more up to her towering over him at her feet.

"Oh, yeah, another thing…." Hannah looked down over Jesse and placed her stiletto heel to the pit of his back. "I really think it'd be a nice idea if you invited Lily Truscott to your up-coming school dance, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am…."

"I'm feeling good about myself." Hannah exacted another vow from the would-be con artist. Humming one of her songs under breath, she turned back the way she had come and started heading out of the house. Just past a high hedge, she pulled off her wig in secret and raced home than be recognized in public.

"My mother ain't ever going to believe this…" Jesse told himself.


	4. Chapter 4

4

"Wait a minute…." Oliver and Lily were first to hear about the rampage of Hannah Montana the next day in school. "You had Jesse Samms groveling at your feet?"

"I sure did…" Miley was beaming happily. "I had him groveling… I had him blubbering… I had him at my feet begging for mercy."

"What makes you think you put an end to his scamming?" Lily asked the question at her mind.

"Oh," Miley was pretty sure of herself. "I don't think he'll be selling…"

"Thanks, buddy!!" Thor Svenson patted Jesse on his back and walked away with a black t-shirt that read "I met Hannah Montana and survived." Emblazoned on the t-shirt was a picture of Hannah grinning ear-to-ear transferred from the camera on Jesse's computer system. He'd sold sixty-two t-shirts so far and had orders for fifty-seven more. Amber accepted two copies of the t-shirt to make up for the Zac Efron basketball apparently taken by Hannah, an incident he had captured on his computer vid-cam. He was even selling footage of her visit for twenty dollars for each DVD.

"What's going on here?!" Miley marched forward upset.

"Jesse is having a clearance sale." Amber answered for Jesse. She had purchased the last of his autographed pictures.

"He is???"

"Yep," The junior con artist confessed. "I'm bringing in completely new merchandise." He sold a pen once owned by Orlando Bloom with a picture of the actor and the wrapper from pantyhose taken from the dressing room of Avril Lavigne. It had her autograph on it. "You see…." Jesse was grinning as his old self. "Hannah Montana paid me a visit yesterday, and guess what she did?"

"Threaten your life?" Miley knew the answer.

"Well, yeah…" Jesse confirmed her accusation. "But she left hair samples all over my house…." He pulled out strands attached to a key ring. "And gave me permission to sell her merchandise in school."

"Sweet Niblets!!!" Miley hissed out loud.

"She did not." Lily wasn't buying it.

"Would she have shown up in my house if it was for anything else?" Jesse looked upon her as Miley turned away and started pounding her head into a locker. How could her scheme have backfired like this? By showing up at his house, she gave Jesse more material to sell using her likeness. How could she not see this coming? Even Oliver was buying up a sweatshirt with the Hannah picture on it.

"Oh, Lily…" Jesse got her attention. "If you're not seeing anyone, would you like to get pizza later?"

"What?" Lily looked to Miley grinning at her then back to Jesse.

"Pizza… Later?" Jesse had offered.

"Well, I…." Lily looked from Miley to Jesse and back again. "Okay…."

"Oh, this is getting better and better!!!" Miley rolled her eyes and walked back and forth still realizing what was happening. This was her fault too! It was her idea to get Jesse fixed up with her best friend!

"Isn't it weird?" Oliver got into her face. "First you liked Jesse, then you found a reason to not like him, and now he likes Lily."

"Rub it in why don't you!!!" Miley snapped off a response. The school bell rang and the students around Jesse quickly broke up and dispersed. Oliver bolted for his gym class where he could be masculine without Miley and Lily feminizing his school image. Behind him, Jesse slammed his locker fast to keep a teacher from seeing in it and left a long beaming glance upon Lily as she lit up herself. So, she got the cute new guy herself…

"Lily," Miley tugged her into the direction of their first class. "Please, you can't date Jesse Samms."

"Why not?" Lily didn't understand.

"Because he's my worst enemy…"

"No, he's not…" Lily revealed she had a bit of insight. "You just don't like him because of what he does, but he's never actually done anything to you. Come on, Miley, you know I've never had much success with boys. Don't tell me I can't see Jesse before I can start even dating him."

"But, Lily…"

"Miley…" Lily implored her to reconsider. "I can't be Hannah Montana. Please don't make me give up something I don't have yet. I've done a lot for you. As my best friend, you have to give me something every once in a while." She paused and took a deep breath. "Look, if things don't work with him, I'll break it off, but… give me a chance to be someone other than your sidekick."

"Lily," Miley placed her hand on Lily's shoulder. "You've been a lot more that that."

"Then prove it…"

Miley looked to Lily with renewed recognition and draped her arm over her shoulders as they headed to Mrs. Kunkle's class. The school warning bell sounded and Lily looked casually over her side down toward the gymnasium where Jesse was ready for gym class. He beamed toward her, and she held a secret grin for him too.


	5. Chapter 5

5

Sporting an A+ on a book report for the novel, Great Expectations, Jackson Stewart was beaming to have made such a grade even if he had used up his gas money to his car for the week. It was so worth it. He finally had someone that understood how impossible high school was and the unlikelihood of trying to get done multiple school assignments on time. With Jesse by his side, he just might ace high school after all; if but he could take Jesse with him into college!

"Hey, son…." Robby looked up from watching TV and recognized his first-born. "How was school?"

"It was great!!" Jackson held aloft his history paper. "Look! I got an A-plus!!!"

"Well, ain't that special." Robbie took the assignment and thumbed through it. "All neatly typed with perfect margins and a few odd typos here and there…"

"Well…" Jackson had motioned into the kitchen for a soda. "We all can't type like Stephen King."

"Yeah, that's right…." Robby motioned for his boy. "Come over here, son…"

"Sure, dad." Jackson crossed out of the kitchen and sat beside him on the sofa. Robby then laid his hand across the back of the sofa the same way he did in church back in Tennessee when he was keeping an eye on his kids.

"Funny thing happened today…" Robby started telling a story. "Connie Samms called me to report that Jesse had been caught selling answers to test papers; that's the exact same scam he had back home."

"Really…" Jackson reacted with innocent disbelief. "I can't believe he'd do such a thing!"

"I couldn't believe he'd do such a thing either…" Robbie continued. "In fact…. I hear the principal shut down his little franchise all together."

"What?!!!" Jackson freaked. He had a book report due on Hemingway and he hadn't read the material!!!

"Jesse also turned over his list of preferential customers for a reduced punishment…" Robby Ray hugged Jackson closer. "And guess whose name was at the top of the list!"

"Miley?"

"No…. guess again."

"Oliver?"

"Well, yeah…" Robby Ray had seen Oliver Oaken mentioned on that list. "Let me give you a hint… Jackson Rod Stewart…." He watched his son squirming in pain toward his ultimate punishment.

"Imagine someone else having the exact same name as me!" Jackson tried squirming himself out of getting grounded.

"I have never been so disappointed in you." Robby Ray shook his head in disgrace. "Luckily, I was able to convince your principal out of suspending you if I handled your punishment."

"Dad," Jackson was inconsolable. "Do you realize what you've done?!" He stood up to plead his case. "I was finally getting by! Do you know how hard it is to manage school, work and girls?"

"Son, I lived through my school years." Robby Ray looked to him as a parent than a friend. "That's why I'm grounding you until you read the book."

"But, dad…" Jackson found the library book on the novel still on the coffee table. "It's over three hundred pages, and it goes on and on and on and on and on…."

"Well, then…. You better get busy then…"

"Wait!" Jackson had to try and bargain a deal. "Don't make me read it alone. I'll read it if you read it."

"Well…" Robby Ray thought it over. "Okay, but we've only got the one book, so you read it first, then let me have the book, and I'll read it!"

"It's a deal!" Jackson took the book and hurried up to his bedroom up the stairs. Watching his boy vanish up to his room, Robby Ray Stewart settled back into the couch and flicked the remote to the TV to watch reruns of "Hee Haw." Looking again for Jackson, he took a deep breath and propped his feet up on the coffee table.

"Ain't no way I'm reading that book twice in one lifetime…." He mumbled to himself reaching for a bag of pork-rinds. On the TV was a rerun of "Dancing With The Stars." He leaned forward checking out one of the male celebrity dancers.

"Bend your knees, man! Bend your knees!!!!"

END


End file.
